w^^ 


LIBRARY 


University  of  California. 

GIFT    OF 

\w^^:w^\xnq 


Class 


THOMAS  BALCH 


AND 


THE  GENEVA  TRIBUNAL 


SPEECH 


FRANKLIN  SPENCER  EDMONDS 


AN  ARTICLE 


BY 


WILLIAM   PERRINE 


PHILADELPHIA 
1909 

UNIVERS' 


\9 


03 


.-V 


*•  A     ^     OF  THE 

X  f    UNIVERSITY 

^  \  Of 


THOMAS   BALCH 

AND 

THE  GENEVA   TRIBUNAL. 


An  Arbitration  and  Peace  Congress  was  held  in 
Philadelphia  from  Saturday,  May  the  16th,  to  Tues- 
day, May  the  19th,  1908,  both  inclusive.  At  the 
opening  session  on  Saturday,  May  16th,  in  Horti- 
cultural Hall,  Governor  Stuart  presided.  There 
were  seated  on  the  platform  with  him  the  Hon. 
Wayne  MacVeagh,  Ex-Attorney  General  of  the 
United  States,  Joseph  Swain,  President  of  Swarth- 
more  College,  Dr.  Trueblood,  of  Boston,  Mr.  Edwin 
D.  Meade,  of  Boston,  and  others.  After  some  in- 
troductory remarks  by  Governor  Stuart,  Mr.  Frank- 
lin Spencer  Edmonds,  of  the  Philadelphia  Bar, 
Chairman  of  the  Executive  Committee  in  charge  of 
the  arrangements,  formally  welcomed  the  dele- 
gates to  Philadelphia. 

Mr.  Edmonds  in  his  speech,  published  in  the 
Record  of  Philadelphia,  of  May  17th,  1908,  said: — 

"We  do  not  expect  that  there  will  be  perfect 
agreement  concerning  methods,  but  we  do  expect 
that  there  will  be  perfect  agreement  in  the  ideal." 


182034 


2  THOMAS    BALCH   AND 

After  speaking  of  the  work  of  Penn  and  Franklin 
for  international  peace,  the  many  arbitrations  to 
which  America  has  been  a  party,  and  the  arbi- 
tration treaties  it  has  concluded  with  other  Powers, 
he  continued: — 

"There  is  a  peculiar  significance  in  the  associa- 
tion of  international  arbitration  with  this  city. 
Probably  the  most  important  arbitration  in  the 
history  of  diplomacy  was  that  which  was  held  at 
Geneva  for  the  settlement  of  the  Alabama  claims, 
when  the  old  practice  of  submitting  arbitration  to 
a  sovereign  was  abandoned  and  the  new  practice, 
which  involved  the  creation  of  a  judicial  tribunal, 
was  established.  Through  the  courtesy  of  one  of 
the  members  of  our  Executive  Committee,  Charles 
C.  Binney,  I  have  had  placed  in  my  hands  the  record 
of  the  work  of  Thomas  Balch,  a  citizen  of  Phila- 
delphia, for  many  years  an  honored  member  of  the 
Philadelphia  Bar,  and  one  of  the  foremost  citizens 
of  his  day,  and  from  this  record  it  is  clear  that  the 
original  suggestion  of  arbitration  of  the  Alabama 
claims  came  from  one  of  our  own  body  of  citizens. 

"Mr.  Balch  was  in  France  in  1864,  and  was  in 
Cherbourg  at  the  time  of  the  fight  between  the  Ala- 
bama and  the  Kearsarge.  A  few  days  after  the  vic- 
tory of  the  American  boat,  he  entertained  its  officers 
at  dinner,  and  was  much  impressed  with  their  atti- 


THE   GENEVA   TRIBUNAL.  3 

tude  toward  England.  Upon  further  reflection  and 
deeper  acquaintance  with  the  attitude  of  his  country- 
men toward  England,  it  seemed  clear  to  Mr.  Balch, 
as  well  as  the  leading  statesmen  at  the  time,  that 
there  was  in  these  claims  the  seed  of  war.  In  con- 
sidering how  this  strife  between  two  great  nations 
might  be  avoided,  he  matured  the  plan  of  a  Court 
of  Arbitration,  and  in  November  of  1864  he  had  a 
long  interview  with  Mr.  Lincoln  on  the  subject. 
Quoting,  however,  his  own  notes,  he  said: — 

"'In  speaking  of  England,  I  suggested  an  arbi- 
tration court  as  possible  at  a  future  day.'  Mr. 
Lincoln  in  turn  added :  *A  very  amiable  idea,  but  not 
possible  just  now,  as  the  millennium  is  still  a  long 
ways  off.  But,'  he  added,  'there  is  no  possible 
risk  of  a  quarrel  with  England  as  we  have  enough 
on  our  hands.  One  quarrel  is  enough  for  a  nation 
or  a  man  at  a  time.'  As  to  the  proposed  court  of 
arbitration  he  said:  'Start  your  idea;  it  may  make 
its  way  in  time,  as  it  is  a  good  one.' 

"In  May  of  1865,  Mr.  Balch  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
New  York  Tribune,  and  with  the  powerful  assist- 
ance of  Horace  Greeley  the  subject  was  now  brought 
to  public  attention.  Seven  years  after  in  the  treaty 
of  Washington  his  idea  found  complete  expression. 
His  work  in  this  particular  has  been  forgotten,  the 
historians  of  arbitration  have  but  scant  mention  of 


4  THOMAS    BALCH   AND 

his  name,  and  yet  the  work  of  this  Philadelphia 
lawyer  in  suggesting  the  establishment  of  a  court 
to  decide  questions  of  right  and  wrong  between  the 
two  leading  Anglo-Saxon  nations,  was  probably  the 
initial  force  that  has  led  to  the  success  of  the  great 
movement  of  international  arbitration. 

"It  is,  then,  to  the  City  of  Penn,  of  Franklin  and 
of  Balch,  that  we  bid  you  welcome." 

On  Monday  evening,  May  the  18th,  the  editor  of 
the  Evening  Bulletin,  Mr.  William  Perrine,  devoted 
more  than  a  column  of  his  editorial  page  to  the 
following  account  of  the  part  that  a  member  of  the 
Philadelphia  Bar  had  taken  in  the  settlement  of  the 
"Alabama  claims"  by  the  submission  of  those  claims 
to  the  decision  of  an  international  court  of  arbitra- 
tion.    Mr.  Perrine  wrote  as  follows : — 

"The  sessions  of  the  Pennsylvania  Peace  Confer- 
ence on  the  subject  of  international  arbitration  serve 
as  a  reminder  of  the  manner  in  which  the  most  im- 
portant act  of  that  nature  on  the  part  of  the  United 
States  was  brought  about  largely  by  a  citizen  of 
Philadelphia.  Under  the  administration  of  Presi- 
dent Grant  there  was  no  achievement,  in  our  foreign 
policy,  that  gave  it  more  distinction  than  the  nego- 
tiation with  Great  Britain  for  a  method  of  settling  the 
dispute  over  the  damages  which  had  been  inflicted  on 
Northern  ships  and  commerce  during  the  Civil  War 


THE   GENEVA   TRIBUNAL.  5 

by  the  operations  of  Confederate  cruisers,  notably 
the  famous  Alabama.  The  British  government  had 
declined  to  recognize  the  validity  of  the  claims ;  they 
were  insistently  pressed  by  the  United  States,  and 
there  was  much  bitterness  of  feeling  in  the  contro- 
versy. During  the  Civil  War  there  were  many 
Northern  men  who  had  believed  that  the  conduct  of 
the  English  in  encouraging  or  permitting  the  con- 
struction or  the  equipment  of  vessels  to  be  used  in 
the  Confederate  service,  together  with  expressions 
of  sympathy  for  the  Confederacy  by  a  large  portion 
of  the  English  and  among  English  men  of  affairs, 
justified  belligerent  reprisals.  After  the  war  had 
ended  and  the  question  came  up  at  close  range  as 
to  the  reparation  that  was  due  to  the  government 
at  Washington  for  the  depredations  committed  by 
the  Alabama  and  other  craft  of  its  kind,  this  feeling 
broke  forth  on  several  occasions  in  the  midst  of  the 
delay  and  difficulties  in  arriving  at  a  diplomatic  set- 
tlement of  the  question,  and  it  was  believed  by  many 
Americans  that  war  could  not  ultimately  be  averted. 
But  after  several  years  of  correspondence  and  negoti- 
ation the  treaty  was  made  for  the  arbitration  which 
was  effected  by  Joint  High  Commission  that  sat  at 
Geneva  and  the  result  was  the  award  of  fifteen  million 
dollars  to  the  United  States  and  the  complete  abate- 
ment of  the  contention  as  a  possible  cause  of  war. 


6  THOMAS   BALCH   AND 

"The  original  impetus  to  the  movement  which 
eventuated  in  this  arbitrament  had  come  from 
Thomas  Balch  toward  the  close  of  the  Civil  War. 
A  member  of  the  Philadelphia  Bar,  and  an  accom- 
plished student  of  diplomacy  and  foreign  affairs,  Mr. 
Balch,  who  once  sat  in  Councils  as  a  representative 
of  the  Eighth  Ward,  had  lived  for  some  years  abroad, 
and  was  a  respected  and  influential  member  of  the 
American  colony  in  Paris.  He  had  seen,  off  the 
French  coast  at  Cherbourg,  the  battle  in  which  the 
Kearsarge  sank  the  Alabama;  he  thoroughly  under- 
stood the  gravity  of  the  danger  of  war  by  reason  of 
the  demands  for  satisfaction  to  this  country  for 
what  the  Alabama  had  done,  and  he  conceived  that 
it  was  the  duty  of  wise  men  to  favor  and  secure  the 
adoption  of  some  peaceable  solution  of  the  disputes. 
He  opened  correspondence  with  both  American  and 
English  statesmen  to  that  end;  he  employed  his 
skill  with  the  pen  in  enlisting  public  opinion  through 
the  press  in  support  of  such  a  policy,  and  he  brought 
to  the  discussion  the  resources  of  his  scholarly 
equipped  mind.  It  was  his  thought  that  a  court  of 
arbitration  should  be  created  by  the  two  countries, 
and  that  to  it  all  the  quarrels  growing  out  of  what 
came  to  be  known  as  the  'Alabama  claims'  should 
be  referred. 

"Towards  the  close  of  1864,  while  on  a  visit  to  this 


THE   GENEVA    TRIBUNAL.  7 

country,  he  had  an  interview  with  President  Lincoln. 
Mr.  Thomas  Willing  Balch,  of  this  city,  when  going 
over  his  father's  papers  years  ago,  after  his  death, 
found  therein  some  notes  of  the  conversation.  It 
seems  to  have  related  chiefly  to  international  poli- 
tics ;  the  French  project  for  setting  up  the  Archduke 
Maximilian  as  Emperor  of  Mexico  was  talked  of,  and 
there  was  some  discussion  as  to  the  attitude  of  Eng- 
land toward  the  Union.  According  to  these  notes. 
Mr.  Lincoln  ridiculed  the  Mexican  Empire,  declaring 
that  it  was  *a  pasteboard  concern  on  which  we 
won't  waste  a  man  nor  a  dollar, '  and  that  it  'would 
soon  timible  to  pieces  and,  maybe,  bring  the  other 
down  with  it.*  As  to  England,  Mr.  Balch  men- 
tioned the  proposed  Court  of  Arbitration,  but  Mr. 
Lincoln  observed  that  while  the  idea  was  a  good 
one  in  the  abstract,  it  was  neither  possible  nor  popu- 
lar, as  regarded  the  temper  of  the  American  people 
at  that  time.  He  called  it  'a  very  amiable  idea, 
but  not  possible  just  now,  as  the  millennium  is  still  a 
long  way  off, '  and  he  thought,  too,  that  there  was 
then  no  risk  of  a  quarrel  with  England,  inasmuch  as 
we  had  enough  on  our  hands  and  one  quarrel  at  a 
time  should  suffice  for  a  nation  or  a  man.  Neverthe- 
less, he  felt  that  arbitration  was  worth  airing. 
'Start  your  idea,'  he  said  to  Mr.  Balch,  'it  may 
make  its  way  in  time,  as  it  is  a  good  one. ' 


8  THOMAS    BALCH   AND 

"When  the  Philadelphian  returned  to  Europe,  not 
long  afterward,  he  went  to  London  and  submitted  it 
to  Richard  Cobden,  who  was  the  only  man  there 
that  received  it  with  any  favor.  Everybody  else 
treated  it,  according  to  Mr.  Balch's  recollection,  as 
'the  conceit  of  a  well-meaning,  weak-minded  en- 
thusiast.' But  Cobden  wrote  him  some  kind  letters, 
and  it  was  afterward  believed  that  only  his  untimely 
death  prevented  him  from  bringing  up  the  subject 
before  the  House  of  Commons.  In  this  country, 
the  aversion  to  it  was  even  stronger.  It  was  diffi- 
cult to  find  an  editor  who  would  give  attention  to  a 
drafted  outline  of  the  proposed  Court  of  Arbitration 
until  Horace  Greeley  made  room  for  it  in  the  columns 
of  the  Tribune,  and  Mr.  Balch  afterwards  recorded 
his  belief  that  it  was  mainly  due  to  Greeley  that  the 
idea  was  not  strangled  at  its  birth.  Its  author  found, 
on  his  next  visit  to  this  country,  that  some  people 
profanely  declared  that  he  had  become  a  "Britisher" 
by  reason  of  his  absence  from  his  native  land,  and 
he  personally  received  angry  or  contemptuous  re- 
buffs for  having  advanced  the  proposition. 

"It  was  in  the  spring  of  1865  that  the  Tribune  pub- 
lished the  letter  in  which  he  explained  it.  He  took 
the  ground  that  both  England  and  the  United  States 
preferred  claims  which  perhaps  would  lead  to  war  if 
they  were  not  judiciously  managed;  that  the  Anier- 


THE   GENEVA   TRIBUNAL.  9 

ican  claims  were  chiefly  the  restilt  of  the  depreda- 
tions of  the  Alabama,  that  there  were  British  claims 
which  rested  on  questions  of  law,  and  thai  neither 
set  of  claims  was  strictly  national,  but,  rather,  were 
those  of  individuals,  merchants  and  ship  owners; 
that  war  would  be  a  barbarous,  unsatisfactory  and 
most  expensive  way  of  settling  them,  and  that  the 
Christian  and  civilized  way  of  ascertaining  their 
validity  and  extent  should  be  by  arbitration.  There- 
fore, he  proposed  that  each  party  should  select  some 
competent  jurist,  these  two  to  select  an  umpire  and 
the  decisions  of  the  court  to  be  final  and  without 
appeal.  He  admitted  that  it  might  be  difficult  to 
find  gentlemen  not  already  biased  by  their  feelings 
or  committed  by  their  opinions,  but  he  suggested  M. 
Kern,  who  was  then  the  Swiss  Minister  to  France 
and  who  had  been  President  of  the  Federal  Council 
of  Switzerland,  as  a  type  of  the  enlightened  and  im- 
partial statesmen  in  whom  general  confidence  could 
be  placed.  'The  abandonment,'  he  said,  'of  the 
old  system  of  arbitration  through  reference  to  a  sov- 
ereign— ^more  or  less  unfit  from  the  very  nature  of 
his  position — and  the  introduction  of  a  tribimal  al- 
most republican  in  its  character,  whose  decisions 
would  have  a  weight  as  precedents  and  as  an 
authority  heretofore  unknown  in  expositions  of 
international  law,  would  be  no  trifling  events  in 
the  march  of  Democratic  Freedom. ' 


10  THOMAS    BALCH   AND 

"There  were  some  thoughtful  European  scholars 
or  publicists  who  recognized  the  desirability  of  these 
propositions,  although  in  this  country  the  reception 
which  was  given  to  his  letter  proved  very  conclu- 
sively that  it  was  not  popular.  It  was  only  little  by 
little  and  from  year  to  year  that  the  idea  of  arbitrat- 
ing the  'Alabama  claims'  gained  ground,  and  it  was 
not  until  1871  that  a  basis  of  adjudication  was 
reached  by  the  Treaty  of  Washington.  This  pro- 
vided for  five  arbitrators — one  to  be  named  by  the 
United  States,  one  by  England,  one  by  the  King  of 
Italy,  one  by  the  Emperor  of  Brazil  and  one  by  the 
President  of  the  Swiss  Confederation,  and  it  was  this 
tribunal  which  decided  the  cases  at  Geneva  in  1872. 
Of  course,  long  before  that  time  there  were  many 
statesmen  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  who  were 
ready  to  appropriate  to  themselves  the  credit  for 
having  originated  the  solution  of  the  problem  and 
preserved  the  peace  between  the  United  States  and 
England.  But  the  evidence  is  conclusive  that  Mr. 
Balch  had  first  suggested  it  for  discussion  and  that  it 
was  new — at  least  as  applied  to  the  quarrel  with 
England — to  Mr.  Lincoln  when  he  told  him  to  '  start ' 
it.  Mr.  Balch,  however,  saw  clearly  that  there  were 
wars  or  causes  of  war  which  no  system  of  arbitration 
could  ever  be  likely  to  prevent  entirely,  but  in  his 
writings  on  the  subject  he  thought  that  a  better- 


THE   GENEVA   TRIBUNAL.  11 

ordered  system  of  international  law  could  be,  and 
would  be,  organized  between  the  nations,  and  he 
pointed  out  more  than  thirty  years  ago  how  the  trend 
of  events  was  moving  toward  the  sentiments  which 
now  find  expression  in  'Peace  Conferences'  and 
'Congresses.'  At  that  time  Whitelaw  Reid,  still  a 
young  man,  was  the  chief  editorial  writer  of  the  Tri- 
bune, and  it  was  his  habit  to  commend  to  newspaper 
men  the  study  of  international  law  as  one  of  the 
branches  of  knowledge  on  which  it  was  especially  in- 
cumbent upon  them  to  be  well-informed.  There 
was  no  doubt  in  Reid's  mind  about  the  man  to  whom 
the  credit  of  initiating  the  discussion  of  the  most 
practical  measure  of  saving  the  United  States  and 
England  from  war  belonged.  'About  nine  years 
ago,'  he  wrote  in  1874,  'the  Tribune  published  a 
letter  from  Mr.  Thomas  Balch,  recommending  almost 
precisely  the  plan  of  arbitration  in  the  Alabama  case 
which,  after  infinite  discussion,  was  finally  adopted 
and  carried  out  to  a  satisfactory  conclusion  at 
Geneva. ' 

"In  a  Peace  Conference  sitting  in  Philadelphia  it 
wotild  be  eminently  fit  to-day  that  Balch's  name 
should  be  honorably  and  gratefully  recalled." 


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